


Remembrance

by loversandantiheroes



Series: Blackberry Stone [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen, Non-Canonical Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-29
Updated: 2014-08-29
Packaged: 2018-02-15 07:06:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2220042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loversandantiheroes/pseuds/loversandantiheroes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My first round entry for the Rumbelle Showdown on Tumblr under the blackberry stone pseudonym, now revised.</p>
<p>Set somewhere near the beginning of season 2, after the events of The Crocodile.  Includes some of my own long-standing headcanons regarding Belle’s family.</p>
<p>Prompts: Speak in flowers, Cold splash, Stuck in traffic</p>
<p>------------</p>
<p>There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember.<br/>-Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 5</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remembrance

"Come  _on_ ,” Gold growled, flexing his fingers around the Cadillac’s steering wheel. The car idled, sandwiched between a beat up old Pinto with half a rear bumper and a raspberry Camaro, and breathed a steady plume of blue-white exhaust that disappeared into the heavy downpour. There were perhaps two, two and a half cars in front of him he could make out before they were swallowed up by the rain, leaving only the angry red glare of their brake lights.  Whatever it was that had ground the traffic to a halt was somewhere up ahead lost in the haze.. The stoplight was still working, at least. It glowed like a beacon, painting falling sheets of water in cycling tones of red, then yellow, then green, then red again.

The urge to lay on the horn was maddening, but he didn’t dare. The stalled procession of cars made no sound but for the rumble of motors. No horns, no radios, no raised voices. Just the idling of cars and the echoey patter of the rain. It was eerie, and the idea of breaking the stillness felt almost sacrilegious.

Beside him, his passenger sat as still and quiet as a statue.  Or a ghost. Her forehead rested against the window. Rain ran down it in jagged little rivulets, tracing down her face in phantom lines of blue and gray. A bouquet of lilies - callas - filled her lap. They were traditional, a token of sympathy for the bereaved and a symbol of purification for the departed. Snatches of Shakespeare flitted through his head. Ophelia, beautiful and mad with grief and strewn about with flowers.

_I would give you some violets, but they wither’d all when my father died._

He checked his watch and saw that nearly fifteen minutes had passed since the deadlock - gods, how apropos a word - had started. With no sign of movement up ahead and the static drumming of the rain just getting louder over their heads, Gold finally gave in and killed the engine.

A long beat passed. Without the background rumble of the idling car the drumming of the rain seemed to swell, a hard and hollow staccato. It was coming down with real force now, great big alligator drops that would sting you like hailstones if you were unlucky enough to be outside unprotected.

When Belle spoke beside him her voice was so soft and so terribly small that the pounding on the roof nearly drowned her out.

"He gave me flowers for my fifth birthday. Did you know that?"

He glanced over, but she was still turned away from him, her reflection in the window pale and wavering like the ghost of a drowned thing.

"No. No, you never said."

"It was my first birthday after my mother had died. She had a book on flowers that she used to read to me in the castle gardens. I remember her walking ahead of me with that book in the crook of her arm, tucking daisies into my hair. I can’t even remember her face, but I remember the daisies. And I remember she smelled like roses. She used to keep dried roses in her wardrobe with her gowns.

"I was a quiet thing after she died. I didn’t laugh, I didn’t smile, didn’t play, hardly even spoke. I would wander around the library for hours just touching the spines of the books, or sneak up to my mother’s room and hide in the wardrobe with her clothes and the dried rose petals."

In the glass, her reflection closed its eyes, and Gold wondered if those were tears he saw, or just the rain.

"On my birthday my father took me down to the gardens just after sunrise. There was a picnic spread in the grass, bread and jam and a basket of early summer apples and pears. He said he knew the only place in that castle I loved more than the library was the garden. We ate breakfast in the grass, and after he gave me my birthday present."

She smiled a little, eyes still shut to keep the memory close.

"He’d tied my mother’s book up with a chain of flowers. Lily of the Valley. He gave it to me and kissed me on the head and told me that more than anything he wanted me to be happy again. It’s what the flower meant, you see. Happiness."

Gold dropped his eyes. “Belle, I understand. Your father -“

"Was a fool," she said sadly. "A selfish, frightened fool." The callas in her lap nodded their heads morosely, as if in agreement.

"I tried to go home after you sent me away."

Gold swallowed hard at that.

"The Marchgates were torn to rubble in the war, but by then they were rebuilding. And they were shut to me. None of the guards would let me in. I had them send for my father and the look on his face when he saw me," she shook her head curtly. "He was terrified. He started shrieking at me, demanding to know what I’d done, why I’d be so fool as to renege on a deal with the Dark One. He meant to have the guards bind me and take me back to you, but I was on horseback, and they were on foot. They never caught me."

She turned to him at last, taking one of his hands and squeezing it tightly.  Tears streaked her pale face, and her eyes were raw with them.  ”I know what kind of man my father was, Rumple. I’m no fool. But right now all I can think of is that for all that he was the same man who brought a sad little girl flowers on her birthday to try and make her happy again.

"I’m telling you this because you only ever saw my father at his absolute worst. I just needed you to know that wasn’t all he was, or all he had in him. There was good in him, I saw it in him just as I saw it in you, and for all he did -"

"He was still your father," Gold said gently. Gods knew he could understand that.

"Yes." She nodded in relief and pressed a grateful kiss to the corner of his mouth.

A quiet rapping on the car window startled them both, and Emma Swan’s face appeared beside him in a rain-soaked black knitted beanie.

"Everything ok in there?" she asked as Gold rolled the window down.

"Fine, Miss Swan, just trying to save gas until traffic starts moving again. Any idea what the delay is?"

Emma’s eyes flitted to Belle hesitantly. “Yeah, um, the hearse hit a pothole. Driver couldn’t see it in all the rain. No big harm done but it popped a tire. They’ve got it fixed now, should be rolling again anytime. We’ve stuck a few traffic cones up to detour the pothole, so watch for them and keep to the left until you turn onto Witcham Street.”

Somewhere up near the traffic lights a horn honked twice and Emma jumped. “Ah! Here we go!” She flapped a hand in a quick parting wave and ran up the street in the direction of a vague yellow lump Gold could only assume was her Beetle.

By the time Gold got the car running again the procession was moving, a slow and cautious crawl towards the cemetery, where a white pavilion tent kept the worst of the rain out of the grave that would be the final resting place of Maurice French.


End file.
